The Initiation (11 page)

He clapped slowly, the sound reverberating through the observatory. He made sure it sounded pathetic.

“You're so elitist!” I said.

“I am anything but! No inheritance, no family. I'm a commoner. For your information, my older brother, Mycroft, and I are the only family we have. I am attending Baskerville on full scholarship, emphasis on scholar, meaning I must rely solely upon my wits. No wits, no opportunity. It's quite simple. If I display a certain amount of debonair charm, I can't help it, it is the product of my British education prior to this, and nothing more.”

“Listen, charm
less
, your so-called charm is
about as effective as a bug zapper.” I paused for dramatic effect. (I know a thing or two about drama.) “It's a library. The clue is pointing my brother to the library. There, I expect, he'll find another envelope, another clue, but it's a very big library and my brother's brilliance is not bookish. And he is brilliant, Lock, mark my word. Don't underestimate him; never underestimate James Moriarty. He'll conquer and control the world before he'll allow someone to feel superior to him. Did I say ‘someone'? I meant
anyone
!”

“As to that, it's a matter of gravitational force. In the sky, objects with the larger mass control objects of a lesser mass. The one and only binding law of dominance is mass and gravity. On earth, among humans, humans with higher intelligence control those of lesser intelligence. Intelligence is therefore gravity. I doubt very much James Moriarty possesses the requisite reasoning to control himself, much less the world, so I dismiss your threat—or was it a caution?—out of hand.”

“You are so strange,” I said.

“That's a relative evaluation. What are your reference points for comparison?”

“See? That's what I'm talking about!”

Confusion was not a look that lived happily on his narrow face. I wanted to like Sherlock Holmes,
but just when I thought such a thing might be possible, he would say something so repulsive I was uncomfortable even being in a room with him.

“My expectation is another red envelope. The odds are astronomical,” he said, gesturing to the telescope, “it would be anything but. In a room of dark-colored book bindings and white paper, how long do you think it would require to spot the edge of a red envelope protruding from a volume?”

“You've already found it.”

“Goes without saying. But your brother has not. And he must. It's time we get the game afoot!”

“It isn't a game.”

“It is most definitely someone's idea of one. The question remains: Whose idea? This leads logically to: Why or what for? Which in turn presents a panoply of possibilities still too vast at this point for us to begin to catalogue. As vast as the night sky.”

“Us,” I said, my breath catching.

“Oh, yes. Most definitely us.”

S
HERLOCK KNEW LITTLE OF
J
AMES AND ME AS
brother and sister. His elaborate scheme to get me talking with James about the second clue was overwrought with problems, all of which could be overcome by a simple act.

I tapped lightly on the window to their Lower 3 dorm room. James was lying on his mattress, rolling a miniature football in his hands. He saw me and opened the window. I offered my hand and he pulled me through and inside.

“What's up?” he asked. “You're not allowed in here without Cantell's approval.”

“So shut the door and we'll talk softly,” I said.

He turned to close the door, his back to me. “Is it Father?”

“No. I wish. Nothing new.” I slipped open his desk drawer. I slipped the red clue into the drawer as I reached inside. “Have you got a pen I could borr— Hey! What's this? Another clue?”

I pulled out the empty envelope and held it together with the notecard I was delivering. This was little sister putting her nose where it didn't belong. This was the Moria my brother knew oh so well. This was so much easier than Sherlock's convoluted strategy. I read the clue.

“Put that down!” he said, too loudly, and practically flying across the room.

But of course I didn't. I turned my back to him and feigned reading. He reached around me. We wrestled, and he came away with it.

“That's mine!”

“It's another clue! Why didn't you tell me?” I snatched at it, because that's what little sisters do. There was no way I was getting it without him handing it to me.

“None of your business.”

“How do you know? I'm a Moriarty too! Maybe it is my business!” I eyed him up and down. “You don't look well, brother.” He sat down at his
desk gazing out the window, a slump to his shoulders. He tapped his fingers to accompany his slow, shallow breathing.

“If you're choosing sides, Mo, I'd rather it be with me.”

“Excuse me? If you mean Sherlock, I would never, ever choose him over you. I barely know him, Jamie. You and I . . . we're the team, right?”

“Was it him in the chapel?”

“What are you talking about?” My heart was about to explode. I did not want to lie to my brother. Not ever. Best not to answer, I decided. “Why were you so mean to me in the auditorium? I was being nice to you! That was so cruel, so mean and unfair.”

“That's . . . ridiculous.”

“You won't own up to how you treated me? Since when, Jamie?” He didn't fight me over use of the nickname with only the two of us present.

“OK. I'm sorry. OK?”

“No, it's not OK because I can hear you don't mean it. All we have here is each other. That's all we have for certain.”

“It was wrong. I'm sorry.”

“It was. It was horrible.” I didn't know how far I could push things. “You're different. You're changing.”

“I'm growing up, Mo. It's something you could use a little of.”

“You have
no idea
what girls go through! The looks boys give us. The way we're treated like inferior underlings. We grow up a lot faster than you because of that. We go through stuff you could never handle. Not in a million years! We actually talk. We don't just kick balls and swing bats. We hurt. We change. We ache. We grow up light-years ahead of you cavemen!”

“You switch allegiances.”

“That's not true, and you know it! No one will ever take the place of you, James. Not ever. No way! But, if I see you hanging around with the wrong boys, doing bad stuff, am I supposed to line up like a cheerleader? Not going to happen! My job as your sister is to help you see when you're messing up, because others don't know you well enough to know, much less have the
guts
to tell you. It takes guts to be your sister, for your information!”

“He's the reason,” James said, his eyes darker and more brooding.

“He's helping!”

“He's a flyspeck. He's distorting your vision of things.”

“Is not!”

“The toilets in Bricks 2? That was his idea to
flush those toilets! He set me up.”

“Sherlock figured that out?” Now I was impressed.

“I should have seen that coming!”

“But it worked. Why did you do it?”

He ignored me. “You know who needs to know about him? Mrs. Furman. Crudgeon, maybe. It's time someone does something about him.”

“James, no! He's been
helping
you.”

“I didn't ask for his help. I don't want his help!”

“You see what I have to deal with? You see who you're becoming? It's not you, James. This isn't you! Sherlock can . . .” I shouldn't have mentioned his name. For James, it was like I'd invoked the name of the devil.

“. . . go rot for all I care,” James said.

I stepped closer to him, somewhat taken aback by the intense heat coming off of him. It was like he was glowing hot. Our blood connection was not entirely lost. My brother took a long minute to calm down. I ran my fingers through his hair, something I knew he enjoyed.

I quoted the clue's poem. “‘Where what is seen is not, I forgot. Remembered then again and again.'”

“I'll figure it out,” he said softly.

“Things remembered that repeat. Music repeats. Television shows.” I didn't want to jump to the
answer too quickly for fear of revealing my agreement with Sherlock. “You see something, but not what it's about, not what's in it. If you forget, then something is there to remind you repeatedly. What else fits that description?”

“Clocks. Time. You don't actually see time, you see something counting time. Clocks go around and around, repeating.”

“True. Very good!”

“Dance steps.”

“Interesting,” I said. “And we dance with friends, like it says.”

“Is there a dance coming up?”

“I don't think so.”

“Waking up. Going to sleep. Sunrise. Sunset.”

I hadn't thought of any of these. I wondered if Sherlock had. Suddenly steering James seemed far more difficult. I felt I had to play along. “Good ones! ‘Where what is seen is not.' We see the sunlight before we see the actual sun.”

“I don't know . . . That's pretty abstract.”

“What else?”

“Calendars . . .”

“That's time, again.”

“Words. Wait . . . books,” James said, staring at a stack of them on his desk. “‘Where what is seen, is not.' You see the book but not the story inside.”

“Of course!” I tried to sound surprised, stunned by what a good job I did. I'd always known my brother to be smarter than most, if not all of his friends. Smarter than me, if I dare to admit it. “‘In the company of so many friends!' You don't read as much as I do, Jamie, but I'm telling you, books become like friends to me!”

“The library,” James mumbled. “It's the school library.”

“A book? The Bible's hidden in the library?”

“I don't know,” he said, standing. “But if there's one place Mr. Cantell will allow me to go after curfew, it's the library.”

“You're brilliant! My brilliant brother!”

“Get out of here. And tell me the moment you hear from Father. I'm worried about him.”

“Stop treating me like leftover cheese, would you, please?”

“No promises.” He sniffed the air. “You do kind of stink.”

I punched him. Hard. We'd been insulting each other this same way ever since I could remember. “Your feet should be licensed as chemical weapons.”

He slugged me back.

I'd never been happier.

J
AMES DIDN'T GO TO THE LIBRARY.
H
E MADE HIS
way across the commons and the quiet state roadway that separated faculty housing from the school's main campus.

He found the headmaster at home reading from a pile of business letters and reports of every kind. Crudgeon, who made a point to the student body that his “door is always open,” welcomed James and sat him down in the sitting room across from the man. He offered him something to drink and James declined, though he accepted a home-baked oatmeal cookie when offered.

The sitting room had walls painted gray-green
and white crown moldings; ornate lamps perched on side tables on both ends of an aqua-blue love seat and alongside where the thickset Crudgeon sat in a chair facing an unlit fireplace. The room felt homey and lived in and James would have moved in if it had been offered.

“Headmaster, sir, you assigned me to clean up that mess.”

“Master Cantell did, but yes, James.” He closed the book he'd been reading and gave the boy his full attention. “What of it? Do you feel it undeserved?”

“The first I heard of such a plan, it was from my roommate, Sherlock Holmes. I didn't tell you that, and I should have.”

“Is that so?”

“He'd figured out the volume capacity of the sewer ventilation pipes. That if that capacity proved insufficient, water would be sucked into the system, rush to the lowest level, and flood the lowest bathroom.”

“He told you this?”

“He did. Just before it happened.”

“I see. And how do you feel about reporting your roommate, James?”

“I . . . ah . . .” James had not anticipated being challenged on his decision. “I thought you'd
appreciate the truth.”

“Indeed. But you could have written me a note, an anonymous note, for instance. And you didn't, which means you wanted to take credit for turning him in.” He paused, waiting for James to say something. “Did you want to take credit, James?”

“I guess.”

“Instead of settling it between the two of you.”

“You mean like a fight?”

“Not at all. That's never the solution. Conflict resolution. Verbally. You'll recall Mr. Holmes wasn't the one spotted in Upper Two. It was you, James.”

“Well . . . right.”

“Where do you stand on loyalty, James?”

“To a cause or to a person?”

“Very good! You see the difference. You tell me.”

“In video games, sometimes if you go against your sergeant's orders, you end up shot by the enemy no matter how well you're doing.”

“In life as well.”

“But the sergeant's orders might not seem right for the mission.”

“In your example, is it the infantryman's ‘job' to decide what's good for the mission?”

“If my sergeant tells me to shoot a bunch of women and children, do I do it?” James countered.

“Very good! So what's the determining factor?”

“Ethics, I guess. Values.”

“You guess, or you know?”

“I know there are certain things I won't do for anybody.”

“And that's fine, until you're the sergeant.” Headmaster let the comment hang in the room like smoke.

James's head was spinning. “If my men won't follow orders, I'll disarm them and leave them behind.”

“You'd kill them? For you're certainly leaving them to their deaths.”

“You keep changing the rules!”

“Do I? Aren't the rules laid out to the sergeant and his men back in basic training?”

“So what are you saying?”

“I'm not saying anything. I'm asking you about your loyalty.”

“To Sherlock.”

“To the school, you said. I appreciate your loyalty to the school, James. It's imperative, a fine quality. I'm wondering about Sherlock. He'll never trust you again.”

“What do I care?”

“The sergeant cares. He can't have his men not trusting him.”

“I'm not a sergeant.”

“Not yet, you're not.”

Now in the air hung something unmentioned. The pointed way Crudgeon looked at him confirmed this to James, who wondered what it could be. Something to do with the requirement of his attending the school. It connected Father to this place, and his father before him. And now James himself. The Great Unspoken was no accident—Crudgeon wanted James thinking about this:
Not yet, you're not.

“Meaning?”

“You're new here. How do either of us know what role you might play in the coming months and years?” Crudgeon dodged the answer; he wasn't going to explain the Great Unspoken, but make James come to it himself.

“I should have left you a note. An unsigned note. Anonymous.”

“Still leaves Sherlock in trouble.”

“It was his idea!”

“While there are still places in the world where it's illegal to have ideas, this country is not one of them. Executing ideas, now that's a different story. You see the difference, I'm sure.”

“You're testing me,” James said. “Why? What for? I don't get it.”

“Here at Baskerville you will begin to solidify your beliefs, James. This is the age young women and men start that process. Once you know what you stand for, who you stand with, you will never go wrong by giving that cause or those people your all, your everything. Even your life, as the infantrymen must sometimes do. Whether or not others understand is far less important than that you do. Commitment to ideals is that to which the great men and women have fashioned and dedicated their lives. Do you want to be a Great Man, James?”

Did he? James hadn't given it any thought whatsoever. He wanted another cookie; he was always hungry. He wanted to be living on Beacon Hill with Father and spending time with what few friends he had. He wanted his driver's license and money and freedom. He wisely shared none of this.

“Yes,” he said, having no idea of the origins of his answer. It rose out of him like a belch.

Upon hearing this, the headmaster relaxed his shoulders, unclenched his fists. It was like watching all the air go out of a Christmas Santa. His tone changed as well to a more friendly and collegial spirit.

James left the meeting after four more cookies and a glass of milk to wash them down.

Leaving the headmaster's house, James briefly
felt accomplished, upstanding, and valued, about as good as he'd felt since arriving at school. He stood on the headmaster's elevated front porch looking out across the road at the school's lighted brick buildings, feeling a part of something.

Why his impression changed, he had no idea. A noise? A scent carried on the light breeze? The distance between him and the Bricks suddenly appeared cavernous, an inky, foreboding emptiness; a river of black with no bridge across. He actually considered returning inside and asking for a ride across the street, just the thought of which made him feel like such a coward. It was a few hundred yards of darkness, he told himself. What was the big deal?

Perhaps it was the lack of streetlights on the state roadway that gave him a chill. The lack of any cars. Or maybe it was the sound of the breeze like a low, indistinguishable note. He placed his foot on the first stair tread like a person testing the lake water for temperature. He descended, crossed the roadway, and climbed over the stone wall rather than walk up the road and enter the school's horseshoe driveway. He unexpectedly preferred the idea of remaining in the dark with an eye toward the lighted areas rather than making himself seen and an easy target.

The trees between him and the varsity soccer field rose like soldiers at their posts. He found their company intimidating. From an open window in Bricks 4 came the din of pop music. He had no taste for it. He kept his interest in opera a secret, to avoid being teased to death, but he found Puccini arias to be as close to perfection as any sound he'd ever heard. He had his father to blame for that; the man had been dragging us to the theater, symphony, and opera for all our childhood. It was a curse, no matter what James had been told to the contrary.

Each tree came alive for him, a soldier, a guard, a spy. But he also saw them as columns behind which to hide. He moved one to the next, picturing himself a Navy SEAL on a mission to infiltrate the brick fortress ahead. He slapped his back against the bark and waited, heart pounding.

A hand grabbed his arm, yanked him around the tree, and gripped his throat to keep him from calling out for help. James's knees went weak. He couldn't swallow.

“You listen to me, boy, and you listen good.” The man's voice sounded like a wood rasp. He wore a black baseball cap with no logo, its bill shadowing his face to obscurity. Dark clothes, including a black T-shirt despite the chill night air. “You want
to be like all of them, fine. You want to be with us, solve the clues. Quickly! That is your path, your rightful future that some would try to keep from you.” He loosened his grip. “Easy, now!”

“The . . . clues . . . are . . . for . . . the . . . Bible . . .” James choked out. “Right?”

“Solve them, and you will find your future.”

James lowered his head, relaxing. Then he chopped up with both hands, tearing loose the man's grip and blasting the man's arms high overhead. The T-shirt rode up just for an instant. James saw a small tree-and-key tattoo. His attacker wrapped up and subdued James, spinning him around. He whispered warmly from behind. “Fools follow the other hunters. Winners follow the fox.” He shoved James forward and down onto his knees in the damp grass.

When James recovered and looked back, the man was gone.